The Way Into Chaos: Book One of the Great Way

by Harry Connolly

  “By Inzu,” Kinz said, “we will all make to die here, just as Mahz said.”

  “No, we will not,” Ivy said. “I have an idea.”

  Cazia peeked over the top of the thicket. The warriors were advancing toward the opening of the ravine, but the worm was squirming toward the hill, moving closer to the three of them as though it could sense them.

  Ivy cut the hem of her hiking dress off, just as Cazia had, then sheathed her knife. She rubbed the length of cloth on Kinz’s oiled braid and began to tie it behind the head of one of her arrows.

  “Big sister,” Ivy said, not looking up at Cazia, “do you think you could create a tiny fire? We do not need to burn down a city, just create a little candle flame.”

  Casting a spell was something Cazia very much wanted to do, but the power running through that hollow space inside of her was tremendously strong. Creating a tiny flame would be like cracking open a shutter in a hurricane.

  Still, many things were possible. Cazia glanced again over the top of the thickets. The worm had reached the base of the hill and had started up toward them. It wasn’t fast, but it was inexorable. The Tilkilit had changed direction with it, following whatever sense led the creature toward them. From the top of the ridge, Cazia hadn’t been able to spot paths down through the thickets, but the warriors had. They marched upslope in two single-file lines.

  She crouched back down and began making the hand movements, instinctively adjusting them to restrict the amount of magic that would pass through her. No, she realized suddenly, it wasn’t instinct. The hollow space itself knew how to control her spell. It was not just a wound or a Curse; it was somehow aware. Not alive, but aware. And aching with sorrow.

  That, too, was interesting. Yes, just a few days ago she would have been horrified at the idea, but she was no longer capable of that. Maybe the thing inside her, whatever it was, had planned it that way.

  Spell finished, a flare shot from the space between Cazia’s hands. It was small, but not as small as a candle flame. It touched the roots of the thicket and, green and damp though they were, set them aflame.

  Ivy had the arrow with the oiled cloth tied to the front already nocked. She swung the trailing piece of cloth into the little jet of flame, and it caught.

  The little princess immediately stood, and Cazia stood with her. Fire and Fury, the worm was already more than halfway up the hill, and it was much too big to have fit through the portal. Once again, Cazia idly wondered what Chik’s people fed it.

  Ivy’s loosed her little arrow immediately. As it arced downward, the Tilkilit began to make frantic tapping sounds. A child’s weapon against a colossus, Cazia thought.

  Then the arrow struck the rainbow sheen in the worm’s mouth just above the liquid sloshing in the bottom of its jaw. Flame immediately raced around the inside of the mouth like water spilled over a stone floor. Then it touched the pool of fluid. The mouth lit up like a bonfire.

  The Tilkilit threw a volley of stones, forcing Cazia and Ivy to take cover behind the tree. Bark flew off the trunk at each impact. These were smooth, dark stones like the ones Chik had carried in his hip pouch, and Cazia wondered why they bothered when there were so many others lying around.

  A spout of flame blasted through the thickets in a wave of heat and blinding light. Kinz screamed and fell to the dirt, her hair alight. Ivy leaped on her, smothering the flames with the hem of her skirt. The tree above was on fire...everything around them was. The Fifth Gift is a water spell, Cazia realized, but Kinz’s oiled hair had already been smothered. Harsh, acrid smoke choked and blinded them.

  Cazia stood. The worm had reared up, throwing its riders in every direction. Foot soldiers fled down the hill for the cover of the forest, but the worm rolled and thrashed, crushing many of them. Then it slammed its mouth against the side of the hill and tried to burrow; the stony, broken soil thwarted it.

  Plumes of black smoke billowed from its open mouth, with more squirting out between the segments; the worm looked to be slowly coming apart. Raptors circled well above the smoke and fire. Cazia was sure that if the creature could make a sound, it would have been screaming.

  The girls retreated southward along the ridge line. Kinz looked at Ivy with astonishment. “Was that the magic arrow?”

  “No!” Ivy answered, equally astonished. “I never expected—”

  The fifth segment behind the worm’s head suddenly burst open, spraying burning fluid and meat across the stony ground. The creature collapsed. The head struck the hillside and rolled--still burning--toward the forest.

  “I never expected this,” Ivy said again. “I saw that rainbow sheen on the inside of the mouth and knew it was oil. I hoped to just drive it off, maybe frighten it away. I did not mean to kill it. Do you think it was in pain?”

  Of course, Ivy had already shot two Tilkilit warriors, but Cazia didn’t want to upset her further by pointing that out. “Look, the fire has burned away some of the thicket. Let’s—”

  Ivy didn’t need encouragement. As she started down the hill, Cazia beat burning specks from the back of her dress.

  Kinz trailed behind, but Cazia no longer minded the delay. Thanks to Ivy and Kinz, she had seen something no human had ever seen before. And to think that she had been about to abandon them.

  Together they ran down the burning hillside, kicking aside blackened thickets and beating at flames and thorns that caught at their clothes. Cinders floated around them, landing on their bare arms and cheeks. They were halfway to the bottom when Cazia realized she’d left the spear on the ridge.

  A change in the wind blew oily black smoke over them, and they nearly collapsed with choking. Cazia had to practically carry the princess down the hill.

  A raptor swooped down into the smoke, then flapped upward with a figure in its talons. Kinz lost her balance and fell to her knees. Ivy went slack and fell beside her, still coughing. When Cazia dragged them both upright, their clothes were ashy and smoldering. Somewhere up ahead, another of the worm’s segments burst open, hurling chunks of burning flesh into the air.

  “Keep moving,” Cazia said, her throat tight. She realized she had slowed quite a bit. Her lungs. She was choking on the smoke and not getting nearly enough air. If she didn’t start paying attention to her body, it was going to kill her.

  Cazia knew they had to stumble onto one of the paths the Tilkilit had used to climb the hill, eventually. The torn hem of her skirt no longer protected her shins from the cinders and thorns. Her boots were becoming painfully hot.

  Then she stepped, and found no ground for her foot to fall on. The three of them slid down a steep, stony part of the hill. Kinz cried out piteously, a sound Cazia was sure would draw the raptors. Ivy lay on her stomach at the bottom of the slope, her elbows and forehead scraped bloody. Cazia went to help her up and was suddenly face to face with one of the insect warriors.

  It was dead, obviously. It had been burned gray, still upright only because it had become tangled in the thicket. Interestingly, the worst burns seemed to be around the base of its skull where its speaking scents came out.

  Beside the body was a deer path down the hill. Cazia helped Kinz to her feet, then led them away from the flames. Immediately, the air became cleaner. After several paces, they stopped long enough for their coughing fits to pass.

  Ivy had broken her bowstring somewhere on the hill; she’d be doing no more fighting today. Her scrapes were raw but shallow--they’d already stopped bleeding--but she looked frightened and dispirited. Maybe she needed some encouragement, maybe a hug, but Cazia wasn’t the one to give it.

  Kinz knelt beside the princess; she looked just as weak and shaky. Cazia suspected she didn’t look much better, although her own scrapes and hacking cough seemed to be someone else’s problem.

  The Tilkilit clicking seemed to be far away. The thicket grew higher than their heads on both sides. Cazia brushed ash and cinders from Ivy’s clothes. They had seen and done amazing things together, and she would need them both as wit
nesses if she was going to return in force for that portal.

  They moved forward, sliding down the hill in places where it grew steep. Behind them, another of the worm’s segments burst, then two more in quick succession. Eagle cries filled the air. Smoke rose into the sky like twisting black towers.

  A piece of burning shell fell onto the narrow path. It was as large as three butchered sheep, and the flames began to spread through the bushes on both sides. Cazia made to push through the thicket to go around.

  “No!” Kinz hissed. “Hunting birds will dive at rustling grass. You will call them down upon us.”

  Fine. That just meant Cazia had an excuse to cast another spell.

  Her water spell sent out a spray from the empty space between her hands. The fires sputtered and the black smoke became mixed with white steam, but she kept the water flowing until the only flames left were floating downhill on the tiny stream she’d created.

  The spell didn’t want to end, so she sprayed water onto her boots, then her skirts, then onto the other two girls to cool them. Cazia felt the magic building in the hollow space inside her the way a flooding river builds behind a dam. It seemed that it might break her apart and rush out into the world. The pressure suddenly became intense, and that dead intelligence inside her longed to break free like an infant striving to be born.

  All she had to do was surrender, and she would fly apart and be no more. Hollowed out. The waters of her spell would wash Ivy and Kinz away--everything would be washed away, and she would never enter that portal.

  The portal. Cazia pinched off the power of the Gift, letting it fade away. She wanted to enter that portal. It didn’t matter if the waters washed Ivy and Kinz away, or if it gave away their position to the raptors above. The portal was everything.

  The spell dwindled to nothing, and Cazia fell into the mud and wept. Ivy and Kinz knelt beside her--her spell had drenched them brow to boot-- and tried to comfort her, but they didn’t understand. How could they when she didn’t even understand herself?

  Ivy turned Cazia’s face toward her own. “Cazia. Big sister. We must keep moving.” She sounded as if she was trying to reason with a mad woman. That’s because she is.

  Another segment of the worm burst open, bathing them all in orange light. Something passed over them--Cazia felt the breeze but didn’t see it--then a piece of shell as long as a door fell into the bushes beside the path, filling the air with a new plume of black smoke. Time to go. Cazia lifted Ivy over the blackened flesh blocking the path, then Kinz.

  All three of them ran down the path, stumbling when the ground was uneven, snagging their skirts on thorns when they veered too far to one side.

  Then they were clear of the smoke. They had reached the bottom of the hill and the end of the path. The stony ground ahead was bare of any cover except for a few brown weeds and charred logs. The green forest seemed very far away.

  All three knelt within the cover of the thicket. It had taken Chik almost two days to lead them to this part of the valley. How were they supposed to make it back with all of his people hunting them? “We’ll never make it back to our climbing vines, not with all this, assuming we could even find them. We’ll have to dig through the mountains again,” Cazia said. She could feel the Eleventh Gift growing inside her, and she had to clench her fists to keep from casting her spell.

  “Cazia, no!” Ivy said.

  They looked at her as if she’d announced she was going to drink poison. And they were right; she knew they were right. The last spell had nearly gone out of control... It felt as if it would kill her.

  But the urge was still there, suddenly become as undeniable as starvation. She knew that when it came out of her, it would run out of her control. Could she cast a version of the Eleventh Gift strong enough to bore all the way through a mountain?

  A voice inside her said yes but she wasn’t sure she could trust it.

  “Cazia,” Ivy said. “You have to promise you will not cast any more spells. The strain you are putting on yourself is too much.”

  “And the damage you have already made to yourself—”

  “I know.” Cazia wiped tears from her sooty face and tried to summon up a reasonable expression. “I know I have already done too much, but I want us to get back over the mountains, and we’re not going to do that without magic.”

  “We can,” Ivy said. “Cazia—”

  “Cazia is dead.” Part of her wanted to feel good about finally admitting that, both to herself and to the world, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t even entirely true, but it would be soon. Not that it mattered.

  “Have it your way, Doctor Freewell.” Ivy’s tone was sharp and her eyes filled with tears. Did she think Cazia was trying to offend her? If they reached safety, Cazia would have to explain that she didn’t care enough about the girl to insult her. “But I want you to swear to us, on your magic, that you will not cast another spell today.”

  Cazia looked up at the mountain looming above them to the south. She could imagine the stone-breaking spell it would take to bore a hole straight through it, could envision the changes to her hand motions and visualizations that would require.

  She didn’t have that kind of power, but she could channel it. She could open the hollow space inside herself and let the magic flow through.

  She knew it would destroy her, but wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. Would she physically die? It was possible, but the strain she’d felt when she was putting out the fire didn’t seem physical.

  Would she become like one of the wizards from the children’s stories she’d heard all her life, creating monsters, poisoning rivers, murdering whole clans in their sleep? Would she become like Doctor Whitestalk? Like Doctor Rexler, the man Old Stoneface became famous for killing? Would she even remember her name?

  Ivy and Kinz were waiting for her promise. “No.”

  A Tilkilit warrior suddenly landed beside them. Ivy spun toward him and lost her balance. She fell against Kinz’s injured side, and together they tumbled into the thicket. Kinz cried out in pain.

  Cazia snatched a dart from her quiver. Was this going to be the spell that tore her apart? It seemed to be. She began to make the necessary hand motions.

  Dropping his spear, the warrior slipped his hand into the pouch at his hip and drew out one of the strange, black stones they carried there. Fire and Fury, he was too close to miss. Tilkilit warriors could throw those stones hard enough to break bones, and as he drew back his arm, she dove sideways toward the only cover available to her, Ivy and Kinz’s bodies.

  But she had no fear to give her movements urgency, and that made her slow. The warrior threw the stone; it struck her solidly on the thigh.

  The whole world dimmed, then pain shot through her body. The hollow space inside her registered a moment of curiosity: That was no ordinary stone; what an odd sensa--

  Then the alien hollowness inside her was ripped away, and Cazia screamed.

  Chapter 28

  Tejohn had grown up on a farm where the work started before first light and never really ended. He’d drilled with soldiers, marched through the night, and charged enemy squares when he was on the edge of collapse. He had drilled the prince and his friends for hours through the hottest days of summer.

  But he had never worked as hard in his life as he did as a servant.

  Every morning, he was woken with a sharp slap from a baton. Every day, he labored for hours in the wind and rain, wearing nothing but a cloth tied around his waist. He was fed once, at midday, usually thin rice gruel. The work continued long after darkness until he was so tired, he could barely hold his head up.

  People died all around him. On his first day hauling rocks, a man collapsed on the rocky slope, spilling his basket. The overseer lashed him until his back was raw, but nothing could make the fellow respond. Tejohn watched in horror as the body was hauled away like trash...until a lash across his own back drove him back to work.

  At first, Tejohn was determined to prove his worth. He wa
s certain that if he worked harder than the others and did not complain, the people in charge would move him to less miserable work. He pulled baskets of broken rock out of the pits faster than anyone else. He carried them up the hill fastest. He even picked up stones that others dropped.

  On his second day, the frayed basket he was raising out of the pit broke. It wasn’t anything he did; the woven grasses simply tore under the weight, raining stones into the pit below. Luckily, no one was hurt.

  But six of the overseers dragged Tejohn away, tied him to a post, and gave him four lashes. He did not make a sound until they finished by throwing a bucket of icy salt water onto his back.

  In his soldiering days, he would have been ordered to a sleepstone, as long as there was no one else with a greater need. Instead, the overseers sent him back to the pit. For the rest of the day, he worked more slowly than anyone else.

  That night, he found that one of the other servants had stolen his thin blanket, the only protection he had against the damp, chill air. As he lay shivering, a whispered voice in the darkness said, “You think you’re better than us.” There was so much venom in it that Tejohn was sure he would be murdered in his sleep, but he was wrong. No one was going to be merciful enough to simply kill him.

  Servants were beaten when they worked too slowly. They were beaten when they hurried. They were beaten when they looked an overseer in the eye or did not meet the overseer’s gaze. Talking was forbidden but silence was suspicious. They spent every day hungry, exhausted, and so parched, their heads hurt. Merchants and other townsfolk sneered at him when they weren’t close enough to spit on him. Wealthy men strolled along the edges of the work yard, looking over the women working there the way Tejohn might choose a fish at a stall.

  His back ached and bled. His stomach grumbled. His bare feet were covered with cuts and bruises. Once, when he slipped on a rain-slick piece of slate and bruised his knee terribly, the overseer put his boot on the back of Tejohn’s neck.

  He lay on the dirt, waiting for the man to decide whether to lean one way and break Tejohn’s neck, or lean the other to let him live. When he’d been a tyr, Tejohn had ignored the servants. He quickly discovered that, to a servant, there was no better class of person than that.